The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

eceived. One man lives, the other starves; not that the first has any power
of self-nutrition, but that he received the outward thing through which the
power of nutrition is exercised, and did not counteract its effect; the other
did not receive the food, and consequently failed to receive the nutritive
energy, or receiving the food outwardly, like the first, presented something
in his system which resisted the working of its nutritive power. The
dependence of the adult on nutriment is the same as that of the infant. The
adult can, indeed, ask for nutriment, an asking which is prayer, and the
infant cannot. The adult, with reflective consciousness, craves, and with
reflective consciousness receives nutriment, which the infant cannot do; but
the life of neither is self-sustained. Both must be nourished of God by
means of food. The mystery of regeneration lies in this central mystery, that
the new man is a creature, not a manufacture; he is born, not self-made; his
moral condition is the result, primarily, essentially, and positively, of the
divine will, not of his own--he is the child of God: "Which were born, not
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." With God all
things are possible. "God is able of the very stones to raise up children
unto Abraham;" and if of the hard rock we tread upon, He could make
tender and faithful hearts, who shall attempt to limit His energy in regard to
any of our race, to whom his promises are given? If God could, from
inanimate Nature's hardest shapes, raise up faithful children to faithful
Abraham, much more can He raise them up from infants, the children of
His people--the children of the covenant. The internal processes of
regeneration are hidden from us. "The wind bloweth where it listeth (the
Spirit breathes where He will), and thou hearest the sound thereof, but
canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. So is every one that is
born of the Spirit." God claims for Himself the whole work of our
regeneration. "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but
according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and
renewing of the Holy Ghost." Titus iii. 5.
The absolute Essential.
The absolute essential in regeneration, and the only absolute
essential in the way of an agent, is the Holy Spirit: Not even